Tatrzanski Park Narodowy

Tatra National Park, Zakopane Poland

Our guide for this tour has been 'keeping-a-weather-eye"; pretty important for a tour that is to include winter activities. Tomi determined a couple days ago that the weather in Jasna wasn't going to work for snowshoeing (boo) but that we could do a Nordic pole hike here in the National Park. Weather forecast was spectacular for Zakopane so we agreed to delay our ride to Jasna for a few hours and hike instead. Absolutely Fantastic!

It was a chilly -10C when we started, with clear, sunny skies. Tomi had rented poles for us all and we started off from the hotel and walked about 1km to the end of town and the roadway to the park. Another 2 or so kms along that trail bought us some lovely views of the southern part of town and over to the West side hills we'd seen 2 days earlier.

We reached the main gate to the park and after paying our entrance fees, made our way along the well-groomed trail up to a meadow with a hut that's often open with tea & snacks for hikers the Herbaciarnia. This was in a pretty open valley space where views of the mountains were spectacular.

That's Tomi on the bridge!
From there, we trekked higher another km or so to a mostly-frozen waterfall called Siklawica. Just so much beauty. Mountains, mountain streams, snow-covered trees, quiet forest.

I keep telling myself I need to get out into the woods more often at home...and today was no different.
Before we came back down, I left a little Inukshuk near the waterfall to commemorate my visit

Once we were back to the hotel (Hey! we did almost 9kms on that trek!!) we got our bags loaded into a private car for our trip to Jasna (yah-s-nah), a ski resort in Slovakia. A few minutes south of Zakopane, we crossed into Slovakia and then, BOY did we start seeing even more mountains. If we'd been able to drive a straight line, we likely could have been to the resort in 45 minutes. But with mountains & valleys to climb, it was 2 1/2 hours - of more beautiful scenery.

After we arrived, we stopped for lunch at a local place then went off to our hotel. This one is owned by a Scandinavian company & you can tell - trying to fit as many teeny rooms as possible to maximise the guest count for sure. It's efficient but pretty tight.
Supper in the hotel and then a quiet evening. Tomorrow is a free day - if the weather holds, we'll take the gondola to the top of the mountain (coming down the same way!!).